“The slippery slope” doesn’t frighten very many people in Washington because that’s where a lot of politicians live. Life can be comfortable there, and it’s usually quite profitable. But it’s a dangerous piece of real estate for the rest of us.

The conventional wisdom is that an independent presidential bid by New York billionaire Donald Trump would harm the Republican candidate in 2016. That’s probably incorrect. Most often, significant independent general-election candidacies harm the incumbent or incumbent party more than they do the challenging party.

In a recent interview defending the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran, President Obama argued that that his approach to Iran is essentially the same as that which Ronald Reagan took toward the Soviet Union. Mr. Obama said that ” where I completely admire him was his recognition that [an agreement would be worth doing] if you were able to verify an agreement that you would negotiate with the evil empire that was hell-bent on our destruction and was a far greater existential threat to us than Iran will ever be.”

When President Obama announced that he was going to “fundamentally transform” America, not many Americans understood the full depth of that statement. Based on an assessment of his policies over the last six and half years, clearly one of Mr. Obama’s objectives has been to diminish America’s standing and leadership role throughout the world. One result has been that our allies now don’t trust us and our enemies don’t fear us — the worst possible combination.

Diehard defenders of President Obama’s continuing, wretched rollout of the Affordable Care Act may be quick to point out that other government programs, most notably Medicare, also had rocky starts. But the historical record doesn’t support such nonsense.

The United States Senate has a long and justly celebrated tradition of comity and respect among members. Although there have been occasional exceptions throughout history, on the whole, senators have taken great care to treat each other with courtesy and respect, both in private discussions and in public deliberations.

Ever since the Ayatollah Khomeini and his Islamist storm troops took over Iran in 1979, the driving force of the country’s rulers has been (1) destroy Israel; (2) establish Iran as the hegemonist of the Middle East; and (3) drive out all Western influences from the region. Their efforts to create a nuclear arsenal has been part of their strategy to accomplish these goals.

Just two months ago, the nation marked the 40th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, and many of the stories in the media were illustrated with images of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the Mall, which over the past three decades has become an American cultural icon — symbolizing that difficult period in our history. Yet, that memorial, as we know it today, almost didn’t happen.

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Back on Sept. 11, 2001, the existence of a war with radical Islamic terrorism was never more obvious. Today the radical left and misguided liberals believe we can slow-roll the advance of peace by appeasement and delay while these same radical Islamic elements strike us in our homeland and gain strength abroad.

Airline pilots have always been armed, except for a period from 1988 to 2002 when passivity in the face of violence somehow seemed logical. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, many wondered why pilots were ever disarmed. Congress passed the law that rearmed airline pilots with large, bipartisan, veto proof majorities in both houses of Congress. Rearming airline pilots has proven to be safe, very inexpensive and a highly effective deterrent to those who would use civilian airliners filled with innocent people as weapons of mass destruction.

This week, Sen Orrin Hatch, Utah Republican, and Rep. Tom Price, Georgia Republican, introduced a new proposal to rebalance the rights and the law regarding employees and union bosses. The Employee Rights Act (ERA) is a package of widely supported reforms that will stop workplace abuses of both union and non-union employees by big labor unions. The ERA gives individual employees the power to control their own money, personal information, and choice for legal representation in the workplace.

Reverence for life is a good thing, but some people who revere lion life have got their priorities on crooked. Human life is important, too. The Media Research Center observes that the television networks have devoted far more time to the death of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe than to revelations that Planned Parenthood has been dissecting aborted human babies and auctioning the baby parts to the highest bidders here in the United States.

Political rhetoric is dangerous in the hands of careless writers and speakers. Reaching for Hitler as an analogy for contemporary villainy is particularly misleading. Hitler has been sui generis, one of a kind, since Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun, rivaled in modern times only by Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. Mullahs, evil as some of them may be, don't count. They're bush leaguers.

On July 20, U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson sentenced Joseph Dougherty, the former boss of Philadelphia-based Local 401 of the Ironworkers union, to 19 years in prison for "overseeing a years-long campaign of sabotage, arson, and intimidation," as Philadelphia Inquirer staff writer Jeremy Roebuck put it. Mr. Dougherty's targets were nonunion construction employees and employers.

Anew Facebook profile photo is beginning to spread on the Internet, especially among members of the rising millennial generation. It's a picture of a baby within the womb. Superimposed on the baby is an equal sign.

The late, great Jack Kemp, an architect of the Reagan tax cuts, used to say "without capital, capitalism is just another ism." Capital is the plant, the machinery, the computers, and trucks that businesses invest in to become productive and efficient providers of goods and services.

The Sunday morning talk shows could be a little more spirited than usual. Donald Trump will be the featured guest on both NBC's "Meet the Press with Chuck Todd" and ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopolous" to have his say on the upcoming GOP candidate debates, and much more.

Here's another thing for Congress to worry about. Washington is sinking, and not for political reasons. Geologists now claim that the land around the nation's capital "is sinking rapidly" and that the city of Washington, could drop by six or more inches in the future. The area is sinking faster than any location on the East Coast, they say, warning that the phenomenon could threaten "the region's monuments, roads, wildlife refuges, and military installations."

Could he really be elected for a third term? In a speech made during his trip to Africa this week, President Obama suggested that he could win a third term if he ran for the White House. A new poll could challenge that idea, though. A Rasmussen Reports national survey of likely voters reveals that 30 percent would vote for the president if he ran again, and 63 percent would not.

Joseph C. Goulden's review of David Hoffman's "The Billion Dollar Spy" (BOOK REVIEW: 'The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal,'' Web, July 5) gives a riveting account of how the CIA recruited a Soviet agent named Adolf Tolkachev.